If you cast too many down-votes, then each down-vote poses a chance that you'll lose 1 XP. If you only cast down-votes occasionally, then each will still give you a chance of gaining 1 XP.

I was afraid that this wouldn't have been fair and that it would have far worse side effects than the problem it aims at solving. Reading the more accurate description of the mechanism, though, I think I'm safe, for one.

My concerns were that I do frequently downvote. Indeed, as I have already written (but I'm currently unable to find any reference through Super Search) I often start my visits to the Monastery from Worst Nodes, to avoid the bias of Best Nodes, amongst other reasons. Basically, I upvote any node that was unjustly (IM{V|NS}HO) downvoted (which is relatively rarer), and confirm the downvote otherwise. Then I upvote the answers to the negative reputation nodes... well, if they deserve to, but generally they do. I would say that on average I spend at most 25% of my daily votes on -- ones, but generally even less. I don't think that this is unethical the most important point probably not being to raise the Monastery's overall brightness as much as doing so reasonably while at the same time sharpening the contrast between good ones and bad ones. Of course I'm not talking about spam, which I ignore altogether...

I personally believe, anyway, that a far better mechanism should take care of people downvoting perhaps only once or twice a day but on an hominem basis. One way to detect such behaviour would be to check for downvotes applied where many upvotes went. Of course this should be not take strictly for otherwise one could not simply disagree with most others which in all earnestness can and probably must happen... but if this kind of downvoting takes place too often and perhaps always with the same target author(s) then it may ring a bell...